A Clockwork Fairytale
by divergentandproudofit
Summary: A few months after the defeat of Axel Mortmain, all seems to be well. Tessa and Will grow closer by the day, and Charlotte gives birth to a healthy son. But deep in the Downworld, trouble is brewing. The dreaded Pandemonium Club will rise again, and the safety of the entire world hangs in the balance. Can Will and Tessa stop the destruction- before it's too late?
1. Prologue

Prologue

* * *

_"And I — my head oppressed by horror — said:_  
_"Master, what is it that I hear? Who are_  
_those people so defeated by their pain?"_  
_ And he to me: "This miserable way_  
_is taken by the sorry souls of those_  
_who lived without disgrace and without praise._  
_ They now commingle with the coward angels,_  
_the company of those who were not rebels_  
_nor faithful to their God, but stood apart._  
_ The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,_  
_have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them —_  
_even the wicked cannot glory in them." _

**Dante, ****_Inferno_**

* * *

The clockwork monsters were gone now, and she knew that. But that knowledge did not prevent Tessa from waking up in the middle of the night with a scream in her throat, clutching at her tiny clockwork angel for comfort. The angel had fallen silent, no longer ticking like a second heartbeat, and yet she still felt that it was a piece of her own self. The real angel that it had imprisoned for years had saved her life, and those of her friends. And on nights like these, she would grasp the angel pendant tightly in her hand, until the metal warmed from the heat of her skin and she no longer felt so afraid, or so lost.

Nights like these, when she felt that she might scream and scream and no one would be able to hear her, solace was so hard to find.

Though the past months had been relatively peaceful, with days of happiness and serenity, she still found herself turning at the slightest noise, expecting to see another dreadful automaton bearing down upon her, or a grinning Axel Mortmain coming to steal her away and lock her in a dark dungeon, never to see the light again. His words still echoed disturbingly in her head when it got too quiet: _there is no Tessa Gray. _Sometimes, she wondered if it was true, for although her mind and soul were her own, her physical form felt fluid as water- she could become someone else in the blink of an eye.

No, there would be no forgetting. Not for Tessa, with her screaming nightmares and paranoia, for Charlotte, who Tessa sometimes saw crying over a tiny doll in a dusty room whose occupant had long since passed on, or for Will, who was constantly turning around to talk to a Jem who was no longer there, or Henry, who would never walk again.

It was worse, too, since Will had been sent to Idris for six months of special training. He was the one who held her until her tears subsided, made her laugh on her darkest days, kissed her with such force that she lost all sense of time and direction. She missed him terribly, and she wrote to him nearly every week, counting down the days until he returned home to London.

There was no chance that she was going back to sleep now. Sighing, Tessa lit the kerosene lantern on her bedside table and pulled her battered copy of _A Tale of Two Cities _out from under her pillow. She opened to a page at random and commenced reading, smiling as the words spoke out to her in the dim, flickering light.

_"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery..."_

She was so absorbed in her reading that she did not hear the insistent tapping on her window for quite some time. She drew open the curtains, thinking the source of the sound to be a songbird or something of the sort, and stared in horror.

On the other side of her window, written in what she was certain was blood, were five awful, terrible words:

_We are coming for you._

Surely it was a dream, another horrid dream. She would awake to gray darkness and silent safety. She closed her eyes, and opened them again. The red letters were still there in all their sinister glory.

Tessa stumbled backwards and screamed at the top of her lungs.


	2. Rising Night

Chapter One- Rising Night

* * *

_"Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away."_

**-Charles Dickens, _A Tale of Two Cities_**

* * *

Once again, Will Herondale was having trouble sleeping. Damn that bastard Mortmain for putting them through all the trials of the past few months, damn the Clave for sending him here, to Idris, away from Tessa. And most of all, damn Tessa Gray for making him fall so deeply and utterly in love; she never left his mind, and on the rare nights he did sleep, he dreamed of holding her in his arms again.

He missed her so much that it took his breath away. He wrote to her almost every day, but that didn't ease his pain- in fact, if anything, it made it ten times worse. He counted down the days until his return to London, and he was so distracted during some of his training sessions that his instructor, Luther Blackthorn, despaired. Even his beloved books, the ones he'd been so good at losing himself in whenever things got too rough, no longer held his attention.

If the knock on the door hadn't roused him, he might have lain there for hours, tossing and turning and missing and loving.

As it was, he groaned and rolled out of bed, yanking on a shirt and pulling open the door. "By the Angel, Luther, it's past midnight. What the hell-" he stopped short as he realized it was Magnus and not Luther who stood framed in the doorway.

"Well," Will said upon regaining his composure, "I don't suppose you've come simply for the pleasure of my company?"

" I wish with all my heart it were that simple," the warlock replied wearily. "The London Institute is in a state of emergency. We need you to return immediately, and I fear that the future will bring great darkness."

It didn't take more than ten minutes for Magnus to recount the entire story, and Will's face grew paler and paler as each second passed. When Magnus finally finished, Will sat perfectly still on the bed, in a state of shock.

No. Not possible. Axel Mortmain was dead, and they were safe- or as safe as demon hunters could be. Right?

He raised his head and spewed a colorful stream of curses that made Magnus wince, scrambling to collect his things. Tessa, _his _Tessa, and the entire London Institute were in danger, and he refused to just sit and let it happen. He would hunt to exhaustion whatever fiend that threatened those he held most dear, and he would not rest until it was gone, or he himself was dead.

"Let's go," he panted, elbowing the door open and holding a stack of books in his arms. "I need to know they're all right..."

"All in due time," his friend replied. "But before we leave, I suggest you put on some pants."

.

Tessa rested her elbows on the large rosewood table, forcing herself to take calm, slow breaths. Charlotte sat beside her, cradling her newborn son, Charles, and looking worried. Henry had fallen asleep atop a stack of paper and was snoring loudly, and Cecily was quietly talking with Gabriel in the corner. Only Bridget seemed unaffected; she was sweeping the floor of the room and singing another one of her sad songs, ignoring Gabriel's repeated requests to shut up.

"_If you don't love me, love whom you please,  
__Throw your arms 'round me, give my heart ease,_

_Give my heart ease, dear, give my heart ease,_

_Throw your arms 'round me, give my heart ease."_

Magnus was not present, as he had opened a Portal in the dining room wall in order to fetch Will, and the waiting was agony.

As for Tessa, she could barely hear anything over the pounding of her own frightened heart, and she clutched at the hem of her dress to steady her shaking hands. It had come as a shock to all of them, of course; but it was she who had felt it the most deeply. After all, the others knew nothing of all the terrible things he'd said to her underneath Cadair Idris. Knowing he was dead made no difference.

There was a loud crash, and Tessa looked up. Will lay on the floor amid a rather large pile of books she supposed had come from his room in Idris, and there were dark circles under his eyes and purple-blue bruises on his skin. But he was _Will, _and he was here, and that was all that really mattered. She gave a sharp cry and ran to him, tripping over a book and falling onto his chest just as Magnus tumbled through the Portal. He landed hard on top of both of them, knocking the wind out of Tessa. His elbow dug into her side and she couldn't breathe; Will muttered an unkind word as she attempted to struggle out from underneath him.

Magnus rolled gracefully onto his feet and brushed the dust off his trousers as Tessa and Will attempted to regain their breath, rubbing his elbow ruefully. "As much as I love the idea of a threesome, we have more urgent matters at hand."

Gabriel snorted. Will shot him a sizzling glare and pulled Tessa down for a kiss.

When the two finally disentangled themselves and sat down at the table, the discussion had already started. Nobody had any guesses about the identity of the culprit.

"But why?" Cecily asked plaintively. "Why do such a thing?"

"I don't know," Will replied anxiously. His face was haggard and pale, and there was a weary light in his eyes that spoke of storms and blood and an endless battle. "Maybe just to scare us. Or maybe as a warning. There is only one thing we know for certain- darkness has come once again."

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